Brain Activity Reveals the Melodies That People Imagine (medicalxpress.com)
(Sunday August 09, 2026 @11:34AM (EditorDavid)
from the getting-that-song-out-of-my-head dept.)
- Reference: 0184902130
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/08/09/0050249/brain-activity-reveals-the-melodies-that-people-imagine
- Source link: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-brain-reveals-melodies-people.html
Researchers believe they've found evidence that brain signals reveal the pitches of notes in imagined musical melodies, [1]reports Medical Express :
> [2]Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children's tunes, then imagined the melodies of subsequent bars before humming their imagined melodies. Brain activity from the patients carried information about relative pitches within the imagined melodies. Combining note-level pitch predictions over time allowed the research team to recreate melodic changes that reflected the structure of the imagined songs...
>
> "The model we created decodes relative pitch classes — such as do, re, mi, fa, sol, and la — rather than exact, absolute pitches," [said tudy co-lead Jii Kwon of Seoul National University]. "This is useful because people often recognize melodies by the relationships between notes, even when the same melody is played in a different key."
[1] https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-brain-reveals-melodies-people.html
[2] https://www.eneuro.org/content/13/8/ENEURO.0289-25.2026
> [2]Study participants were 10 epilepsy patients with electrodes on the surfaces of their brains for clinical monitoring. Participants quietly listened to the first bars of children's tunes, then imagined the melodies of subsequent bars before humming their imagined melodies. Brain activity from the patients carried information about relative pitches within the imagined melodies. Combining note-level pitch predictions over time allowed the research team to recreate melodic changes that reflected the structure of the imagined songs...
>
> "The model we created decodes relative pitch classes — such as do, re, mi, fa, sol, and la — rather than exact, absolute pitches," [said tudy co-lead Jii Kwon of Seoul National University]. "This is useful because people often recognize melodies by the relationships between notes, even when the same melody is played in a different key."
[1] https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-brain-reveals-melodies-people.html
[2] https://www.eneuro.org/content/13/8/ENEURO.0289-25.2026